Jasen Quickhttps://jasenquick.com
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Sun, 20 Jan 2019 12:35:15 +0000 en
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1 http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/87dee57f3dfe11b7a3c71700a9652b73?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngJasen Quickhttps://jasenquick.com
The Visitor, or Monthly Instructor for 1842https://jasenquick.com/2016/02/14/the-visitor-or-monthly-instructor-for-1842/
https://jasenquick.com/2016/02/14/the-visitor-or-monthly-instructor-for-1842/#respondSun, 14 Feb 2016 03:38:14 +0000http://jasenquick.com/?p=231Continue reading →]]>When you visit a stately home and see that their library is full of books with the same binding it may be because it was fashionable for wealthy people to buy the books without binding and have them bound in their favourite cover.

My copy of The Visitor, or Monthly Instructor for 1842 has this cover, which seems to have been used for all the publisher’s books:

I accidentally dropped it down the stairs and discovered that the spine is bound with musical notation. Either the Victorians recycled their scrap paper or this particular publisher wanted their books to have a specific piece of music notated in the spines of their books.

I bought this book in 1990 for £10 and it is my favourite book, partly because it has a fascinating article about Stonehenge in which the writer describes what it is like to visit the ancient monument and partly because holding it is like stepping back in time to 1842.

In my first novel, The Significant Deaths of Cage and Constance, the character Micajah “Cage” Reynolds owns a copy of this book. He was given it by his parents at the age of six (in 1848). Over a hundred and seventy years later, he still owns it…

]]>https://jasenquick.com/2016/02/14/the-visitor-or-monthly-instructor-for-1842/feed/0jasenquickVisitor coverVisitor spineVisitor Stonehenge passagelogo with writing black lighter logoWashing Up Milkhttps://jasenquick.com/2014/12/09/washing-up-milk/
https://jasenquick.com/2014/12/09/washing-up-milk/#respondTue, 09 Dec 2014 15:42:25 +0000http://jasenquick.com/?p=192Continue reading →]]>Should you ever run out of soap and find yourself in a desperate need to wash dishes, do not fear, there is an alternative to washing up liquid – milk.

Yes, milk. The Victorians knew it and they advised on the substitute of milk for washing pots, pans, plates and cutlery.

Here is what “Consult Me” says about washing in milk:

“Fill a dish pan half full of very hot water. Then put in a half cup of milk. It softens the hardest water and gives the dishes a clear, bright look, and preserves the hands from roughness and “chapping” which comes from the use of soap.”

“It cleans the greasiest dishes without leaving the water covered in a greasy scum.”

After you have finished you can tip your dishwater on your corn flakes*.

One wonders whether powdered milk, dissolved in the washing bowl, will suffice.

Have you ever wondered whether it is possible to lengthen the life of your milk? Well, yes it is. According to my Victorian knowledge base, simply add a small portion (not an exact measurement) of bicarbonate of soda or borax powder to your milk.

“This is not at all injurious to health; but rather aids digestion.”

Alternatively, you can “place a piece of newly-hammered iron, or three twelve-penny nails**, in each bowl, then pour the milk upon them.”

*not recommended.

**A 12-penny nail is three and a quarter inches long.

* * *

]]>https://jasenquick.com/2014/12/09/washing-up-milk/feed/0jasenquickmilk_34420867Borax Advert cleaned upnailVictorian Ice Creamhttps://jasenquick.com/2014/06/19/victorian-ice-cream/
https://jasenquick.com/2014/06/19/victorian-ice-cream/#respondThu, 19 Jun 2014 23:03:01 +0000http://jasenquick.wordpress.com/?p=172Continue reading →]]>Summer is here and there is nothing more enjoyable than basking in the sun, eating home-made ice cream (unless you are me; I despise hot, sunny weather and like to stay indoors). I do like ice cream though.

Despite the fact that freezers had not been invented, the Victorians also liked ice cream – and they made it themselves.

To freeze the cream, you break ice into a large bowl, make sure you have a good mixture of large and small lumps. Then sprinkle salt over the ice and listen to it crackle. Salt reacts with the ice and the crackling sound is the heat being extracted from the ice – when you take heat out of ice, it drops the temperature to that of a freezer. Perfect for making ice cream.So, for those of you who would do as the Victorians did. Here is how to make some ice cream. Vanilla is so, well vanilla, so let’s try something a bit different.

Make a pint of brown bread crumbs and mix them with 8 tablespoons of noyeau or maraschino syrup. A few drops of vanilla essence and 1 pint of cream or unsweetened custard. Freeze dry. Serve in a pile or mould.

Well, it’s not the most comprehensive of recipes but I suppose it assumes that the reader already has the skills a Victorian (lady) would have acquired. Being a product of the 20th/21st century you probably don’t have those skills. Just saying.

If you make this and it turns out well, let me know.

Hints on making ices:1. Too much sugar will prevent the ice from freezing properly.2. Too little sugar will cause the ice to freeze hard and rocky.3. When dishing up ices, whether in a pile or mould, it will be found advantageous to dish them on a napkin or paper, as they will not conduct the heat to the bottom of the ices so quickly as the dish would.

If you try this and it doesn’t work, more detailed instructions can be had from the author (actually, since Ms Marshall left this realm in 1905, feel free to drop me a note explaining how you have failed miserably and I will offer advice).

Annoying, isn’t it. Bzzzzz. That thing has probably been walking on dog poo and it’s now flying around your head. The buzzing stops and now it is walking around the rim of your Victorian tea cup.

If only there was a way to get rid of flies. Oh but there is…

First of all, you need to protect your food. You don’t want them walking their six dog-poo boots all over your fresh meat (refrigerators have yet to be invented).

So here is what the Victorians recommended for keeping flies off meat:

Dust meat with pepper or powdered ginger.

Run out of pepper or ginger? In that case, fasten meat to a piece of paper on which camphor has been well rubbed. No camphor? Not a problem, use creosote (seriously). Flies don’t like creosote (neither do I, it makes your meat taste like garden fence). Borax is also used as a preservative and disinfectant.

So, that’s the meat fly-proofed. Now we need to destroy the fly (according to “Consult Me” the Victorians didn’t kill flies, they destroyed them).

My Victorian instruction manual has a really simple way of DESTROYING flies. A teaspoonful of laudanum and two tablespoons of water, strongly sweetened with sugar and placed in a saucer. Probably better to avoid this strategy if you have a cat. Laudanum (also known as opium tincture) contains morphine.

Safer for your cat is the following fly-destroying technique:

Ground black pepper and sugar, diluted in milk and put on saucers.

It won’t kill (or destroy) your cat but your cat will probably hate you for spoiling a saucer of milk in such a way. My cat (Cluedo) likes curry, so a little black pepper and sugar in milk won’t bother him in the slightest – which means the saucer isn’t going to stay full for long. Laudanum it is then.

If you can get the fly to sit still, you could try this ingenious technique:

Dip a feather in a little sweet oil and touch the fly with it, between their wings. This renders their breathing impossible.

Of course, if you can get the fly to sit still long enough to touch it between the wings, a rolled up newspaper is probably going to be quicker. Apparently this technique works on wasps as well – but get it wrong and they will fight back.

It is a safe aperient and works quickly. If you don’t know what aperient means, go and buy some castor oil and drink the whole bottle. It will then become apparent what aperient means.

According to my Victorian book it will “cleanse the bowels without leaving any tendency to constipation”. In the same way that drain cleaner won’t make your drains block.

To most, Castor oil is “disagreeable”. It tastes hideous. So the Victorians disguised it by mixing it with… well anything. Put two tablespoons of castor oil in any drink or meal.

If you are brave, simply eat some orange or lemon peel just before you drink the castor oil. If you are really brave, just swig away.

French Victorians (or should we call them Napolean-the-third-ians – abbrev. Nt3s) used to disguise castor oil and feed it to their children by heating some in a pan and then breaking an egg into it. Give it a stir and then add some salt or sugar. Then mix in some currant jelly and feed to the sick child. It’s a bit like not knowing whether you fancy an egg sandwich or a jam sandwich and then deciding to have both at the same time – mixed with castor oil.

A quick wiki search will tell you that castor oil is used in soaps, lubricants, hydraulic and brake fluids, paints, dyes, coatings, inks, cold resistant plastics, waxes and polishes, nylon, pharmaceuticals and perfumes.

The castor bean (from which the oil comes) also contains ricin, which is great for killing people.

Castor oil, though, is perfectly safe.

As we first read, castor oil is good for cleaning out bowels. When your bowels are blocked it is called costiveness (more commonly known as constipation). The reason for its appearance can be described as thus: the sparse use of foods which promote the action of the bowels.

Before turning to castor oil, water is the best remedy for costiveness. If you had been drinking enough water in the first place you probably wouldn’t have become costive. The Victorians felt that exercise, fluids and a good diet were the best preventative medicine for costiveness – and they still are.

Here is a sentence (from my Victorian book) you might struggle to understand if the context was not known:

“If a stool is desired, the patient must earnestly practise the necessary gymnastic.”

In a bar, this might mean something different. In the context of a costive remedy, it means exercise, you couch potato, because your bowels work better if you move.

If you don’t want to drink water or castor oil and like sitting still all day, the Victorians recommend injecting half a pint of warm water up your anus to help dilute the faeces (be careful when researching this on the Internet. Using the words “injecting”, “anus” and “faeces” on Google may bring surprising results – statistically, at least 25%* of you will go and type these in to Google just to see what comes up).

Other remedies for costiveness are the dyspeptic pill (which you can make yourself) and one or two of the following:

Powdered aloes, jalap, extract of gentian, mandrake, cayenne pepper, castille soap, oil of peppermint. Apparently, sulphur is good if you have a tendency for piles. Be careful with the mandrakes though.